PIERRE OMIDYAR

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Place of birth  : Paris, France

Places Lived   : San Jose

Net worth        : US$5.5 Billion (2009)

Pierre Morad Omidyar, 42, Who is a French-born Armenian-Iranian entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder/chairman of the eBay auction site. Omidyar was 28 when he sat down over a long holiday weekend to write the original computer code for what eventually became an internet superbrand — the auction site eBay. The word ‘eBay’ was made up on the fly by Omidyar when he was told that his first choice for his web site.

The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar’s fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen’s 2002 book and confirmed by eBay. In March 1998, Meg Whitman was brought in as President and CEO and continued to run the company till January 2008 when she announced her retirement. In September 1998, eBay launched a successful public offering, making both Omidyar and Skoll billionaires.

To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $270 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, property rights, government transparency, and social media. As an extension of Omidyar Network’s activities in micro finance, in 2005, Pierre and Pam Omidyar gave $100 million to Tufts to create the Omidyar-Tufts Micro finance Fund. Their endowment gift, the single largest in the history of Tufts, is aimed at accelerating growth in the micro finance sector and is being invested solely in micro finance initiatives.

The 76th richest person in the world according to Forbes magazine. eBay went public, making Omidyar and Skoll billionaires, and international eBay sites were soon opened in dozens of countries.

“We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people.”

“eBay’s business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.”

“I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion.”

“I’ve got a passion for solving a problem that I think I can solve in a new way. And that maybe it helps that nobody has done it before as well.”

“When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn’t thinking about it in terms of a social impact. It was really about helping people connect around a sphere of interest so they could do business.”